A collection of private and public sector leaders met in Des Moines Friday to discuss the state-wide impact of the national jobs crisis. Leo Hindery is the chairman of Jobs First 2012, a group focused on making job creation the focus of next year’s presidential election. Hindery says the official unemployment numbers don’t accurately represent how drastic the situation is.

“We have never had so many women and men unemployed and uncounted as unemployed in the history of our nation,” Hindery said. Iowa’s jobless most recent unemployment rate was 6%, compared to 8.6% nationally.

“So when you hear these numbers from the government each month, roughly nine percent unemployment, roughly 13 million unemployed Americans, in your mind you should more than double them,” according to Hindery.

Mathew Segal is the co-founder of a national group designed to help people under 30 called “Our Time.” Segal says the unemployment rate has hit younger workers harder than others.

“National youth unemployment is almost twice the national average at 15.3%, it’s actually much higher than that,” Segal says, “If you consider the amount of people who’ve given up searching for work or if you consider the amount of people who are underemployed with high school and college degrees working part time as waiters and waitresses or in retail.”

Hindery says job creation is a bi-partisan issue that requires support from both the private and public sector.